1. Field of the Invention
The present invention is directed to a method of automatically producing recommended actions in response to a diagnosis of malfunctioning equipment and, more particularly, to a method for associating text with rules or schemata in an expert system rulebase to automatically output a description of equipment condition and recommended actions, included in the text, when the corresponding rules are evaluated as being true.
2. Description of the Related Art
There are many known automatic diagnostic systems. Many of these systems use an expert system rulebase to evaluate data output by sensors connected to equipment. For example, U.S. patent application Ser. No. 156,064, filed Feb. 16, 1988, incorporated herein by reference, is directed to an automated system to prioritize repair of plant equipment. This system performs diagnostics on equipment, such as a turbine generator in an electrical power plant or the chemical characteristics of fluid in a nuclear reactor, by determining a level of severity and a confidence factor that the diagnosed condition exists. This system lists diagnosed malfunctions by severity of the malfunction. An operator of this system uses the diagnosed malfunction, including level of severity and confidence factor to manually select a recommended action from a predefined list. This recommended action can then be followed to correct or avoid further damage from the diagnosed malfunction.
In addition to the dependence upon manual steps, this system has a drawback in that the ordering of recommendations directly corresponds to the ordering of diagnoses, i.e., by severity of the diagnosed malfunction to the operation of the plant. No other ordering of the recommended actions is possible. Furthermore, no attempt is made to use other data to select the "best" action based upon other criteria.